The total project cost is $668 million. DOE share of the cost being $334 million (50%).

The project was a combined ten-year effort with the US DOE. The DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy contributed $7.2 million while Alstom and AEP contributed $1.4 million for the initial phases of the project. Geologic investigation of the Mountaineer site cost $4.2 million. The pilot is projected to cost $668 million

Phase 2: The DOE awarded an additional $334 million in December 2009 for the 235 MW scale-up 10 year project (approximately half of the total cost of $668 million). The Global CCS Institute will provide AU$4 million (US$4.01 million) to support the initial engineering and characterization phase.

Comments:

In July 2011 American Electric Power decided to halt its plans to build a carbon capture plant for a 235 MW generation unit at its 1.3 gigawatt Mountaineer power plant in New Haven, WV. The project represented Phase 2 of an ongoing CCPI project. Secretary Chu had earlier announced a $334 million award for the project on December 4, 2009. According to some sources, AEP dropped the project because the company was not certain that state regulators would allow it to recover the additional costs for the CCS project through rate increases charged to its customers. In addition, company officials cited broader economic and policy conditions as reasons for cancelling the project.40 Some commentators suggested that congressional inaction on setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the weak economy, may have diminished the incentives for a company like AEP to invest in CCS. One source concluded that “Phase 2 has been cancelled due to unknown climate policy.”

The pilot project in West Virginia was successfully operated for 12 to 18 months, starting in 2009 and is now completed. The project tested Alstom's chilled ammonia technology for CO2 capture from flue gases particular to natural gas combined cycle power plants. The 30 MW project came onto production in October 2009. By December 2010, 21,000 metric tons had been captured at >90% capture rate, ~4,400 hours of operation and 15,000 metric tons stored (13,500 into AEP-1 Copper Ridge formation and 1,500 into AEP-2 Rose Run formation). Process availability almost reached 100% for both capture and storage.

The Mount Simon Sandstone is shown to have ideal properties for storing CO2. The target depth was 1.5 miles below the surface where the formation has an estimated capacity for storing about 1.5 Mt/yr. Battelle was the storage contractor and injection for the pilot was through a pipeline system with off-site wellheads.